Behold my latest digital-art experiment and my first time drawing the complete cast of fantasy project The Last Party, which combines the protagonists from previous, now-defunct fantasy comics Party of Two and Hushed Half-Elf:
Below, a closer-up view of the Half-Orc Healer and Dwarf Barbarian, formerly from Party of Two:
2023-10-06 13:00:06 +0000 UTC
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Taking a 15-minute break from grinding away at a seemingly endless (but undeniably educational) test illo for fantasy project The Last Party to hastily throw together today's post, which is yet another Vintage Con Sketches installment derived from recently scanned photocopies of commissions drawn a bit over 23 years ago. Yay?
First off, a shockingly clothing-free Shasti (with knife characteristically close to hand) from Dirty Pair:
2023-10-04 13:00:11 +0000 UTC
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Yeahp, here's a new, hot-off-the-iPad set of photoreferenced life drawings sketched not long ago in Clip Studio Paint, using my beloved (well, beloved when used in CSP's iOS version, at least) Design Pencil brush:
Y'know, I might actually try doing some inked takes on images like this, now that I have a semi-workable inking brush in the Frenden pack's "Pigman Mycon 1" tool. Some of the poorly rendered and theoretically sharp-edged cas...
2023-10-02 13:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Lost most of yesterday's worktime to spending the day at the Toyota dealership getting my car worked on, so I'm deep in a frickin' hole re: filling up today's Patreon slot; so, I'm desperately pressing this post into service based on a jpeg I don't think you've seen before.
Here are the final colors by ace colorist Alejandro Sanchez on a Harley Quinn variant cover I worked on sometime in the late winter or spring early on this year:
2023-09-29 13:13:49 +0000 UTC
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So!
A few months back, as part of my now pretty much abandoned quest for a "hybrid workflow" tried out via comic pages from fantasy test project The Chaste and the Chained, I reworked and expanded some of the initial story's page roughs.
The opening dialogue scene betwixt the Elf Mage and Human Paladin had already been expanded by a page or two during the "digital to analog back to digital" workflow tests; with these newer roughs, I lengthened the scene by one more page, as seen below:
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2023-09-27 13:00:59 +0000 UTC
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UPDATE: Whoops, really thought I had a post scheduled for today; turns out, I did not, so I'm hastily throwing together this puppy to get my third Life Drawing post of the month outta the way. For the record, I do have a whole bunch of content in progress but not yet ready to post—new and/or reworked roughs from The Chaste and the Chained, thumbnails for the new freelance script gig I'm finishing up this week, a half-completed new CSP Life Dr...
2023-09-25 14:38:23 +0000 UTC
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So! Back in 2012, I was briefly talking to the fine folks at Udon about contributing something for the various webcomic series they were working up as part of Bandai's ShiftyLook initiative. Per the linked wiki entry:
ShiftyLook was a subsidiary of Bandai Namco Holdings that was focused on revitalizing older Namco franchises, with their first step being video game webcomics based on the company's various franchises. The subsidiary later offered webtoon...
2023-09-22 13:00:08 +0000 UTC
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[Link to our previous installment in this series.]
Note that I changed the title of this goofy little pseudo-story effort to The Trouble with Emerald from the previous We Have an Emerald Problem, as I found the former a tad punchier.
So!
I've been trying to think of something to do with the various DiD sketch sets I have kicking around that feature back...
2023-09-20 13:00:09 +0000 UTC
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Whilst desperately flailing around for a Monday post on short notice, just realized that I've never shown anything from the whooooole bunch of Tomb Raider design sketches I cranked out for the sadly defunct videogame magazine PSM back in 2003 or so. Much like the RPG-related article I contributed to a few years earlier, this time around I worked up a bunch of design ideas for a somewhat technologically upgraded version of Tomb Raider:
2023-09-18 13:00:08 +0000 UTC
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From my 2019 era of early experimentation in iPad art apps, here's a pair of sketch sets that were my very first tries in Clip Studio Paint (IIRC). I'm posting two of 'em today because the first one barely counts as Life Drawings per se:
...while the next one is a bit more closely based on photoreference, though mainly of animals this time:
2023-09-15 13:00:06 +0000 UTC
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Yea, verily, I returned to a long-abandoned Rose & Lily story to use one of its old, roughed-out pages as a digital-art test that wound up being shockingly successful! Gasp!
Going backwards, we'll start with the page's finished inks, with the "blue-pencil" layer turned off:
This page was inked—well, inked digitally at least—with a new brush that produced comparatively pleasing linework ...
2023-09-13 13:00:06 +0000 UTC
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Here's another Endpage feature I wrote and drew for the sadly long-defunct videogame magazine PSM, this time speculating humorously(?) about more and more expensive package options for the then-new(-ish) Playstation 3.
This blonde pigtail gamer appeared in a number of these PSM comics, by the way.
Note that the prices involved are oddly conservative, even given that 2007 dollars packed ...
2023-09-11 13:00:06 +0000 UTC
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[Dagnabbit, over a g-d month has lapsed since our previous installment in this FFF dealie!]
So! For today's notably belated installment of Failed-Project Friday, we'll be continuing our look at a rather sweeping proposal I made to Marvel back in 2004 for a lengthy run writing Iron Man. The SF-skewing pitch featured three different ambitious story...
2023-09-08 13:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Hastily slapping together another slot-filling post this morning, folks!
From my torn-of-the-millennium "Golden Age" of B&W con sketches drawn on linen-finish cardstock (and scanned from decent but not great photocopies, alas), here are s'more commissions of yore:
A booty-riffic Alita, with an unusual but interesting approach to labeling the piece. Golly!
Next up a generic but likewise interesting devilgirl, with her pitc...
2023-09-06 13:00:06 +0000 UTC
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As I desperately flail around for Patreon content after completely expending my post buffer last week, I recalled that I've only shown Work Stages for pages 1, 3 and 6 from that Harley Quinn #29 back-up story I wrote and drew for DC earlier in the year. (Ackshully, I finished it last year, but whatevs.) So, take a gander at my process for pages 2 and 4 from "Hyena Anxiety," a surreal and/or nightmarish lil'l episode featuring of o...
2023-09-04 13:00:05 +0000 UTC
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UPDATE: This puppy was originally scheduled for Monday, but as my prescheduled buffer of posts is now completely expended, I'm hastily putting this up to fill the g-d Friday slot. Enjoy?
From my 2019 era of experimentation in the iPad art app Procreate, here's another sketch set derived from a mix of random photoreference, mostly of a cosplay-based sort. At this point I was still using Procreate's admittedly "mushy-looking" Medium Airbrush to get something onto the g-d tablet:
2023-09-01 13:18:08 +0000 UTC
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I've neither the time nor the energy for lengthy commentary on these pages, so I'll try to get this post outta the way as quickly as possible.
So!
A while back, I showed you fine folks my take on p.06 from the opening story of The Chaste and the Chained, with the narrative jumping from the scene depicting the Elf Mage bedamseled by mutant cultists to a very different convo scene betwixt her and the Human Paladin:
2023-08-30 13:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Here's the first installment of what will prrrrobably be a multiple-part essay discussing my ongoing issues with comics-production process and perfectionism, which will feature visual examples interspersed throughout the blather. BTW, note that I wrote this in I Am Empowered-style tweet-based format as I may someday post this on Twitter/ "X" or Bluesky at some point down the road.
Let's get started:
After my long stint of near-daily life drawing from 2017-18, the improvements in anatomy and shad...
2023-08-28 13:00:04 +0000 UTC
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[Link to our previous installment in this series.]
Note that I changed the title of this goofy little pseudo-story effort to The Trouble with Emerald from the previous We Have an Emerald Problem, as I found the former a tad punchier.
So!
I've been trying to think of something to do with the various DiD sketch sets I have kicking around that feature back...
2023-08-25 13:00:06 +0000 UTC
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Yeahp, here's a new, hot-off-the-iPad set of photoreferenced life drawings sketched not long ago in Clip Studio Paint, using the Design Pencil brush:
In a quite alarming turn of events, I belatedly noticed that the reference jpeg I used as the basis for the sketch at left was not actually a photo, but instead an AI-generated image. Yikes! (Okay, the g-d AI watermark in the lower corner of the jpeg was a bit of a hint, not tha...
2023-08-23 13:00:06 +0000 UTC
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Here's another piece I wrote and drew for the closing "Endpage" comic feature I used to do for the videogame magazine PSM circa 2007. The topic, this time, covered complaints from sadly low-selling but still beloved Playstation 2 games:
I never played Beyond or Psi-Ops, but did briefly mess around with Okami for a bit. Seemed like a neat eno...
2023-08-21 13:00:09 +0000 UTC
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[Please note that the Empowered vol.12 scene above has been posted here before, years ago; alas, I had to remove this scene from the book for pagecount purposes. As I noted back during the original post (which I don't care to look up), this incredibly meta sequence was originally a joke written for 1998's Gen13: Magical Drama Queen Roxy, likewise unused in that Wildstorm miniseries to scrape out precious pagecount. Ah, but what would've been just another whimsical bit ...
2023-08-18 13:00:07 +0000 UTC
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As pieced together in wildly intermittent bursts of Clip Studio Paint work, behold my first stab at page 6 from the opening story of fantasy test comic The Chaste and the Chained, which serves to begin introducing the lead Elf Mage and Human Paladin in a flashback that actually predates the "real-time" Godmachine Cult scene which opened up the story in pages 1-5.
Back in March (ouch), I sketched out the rough for this page in CSP for the PC via my often challenging and uncooperative Wacom Cintiq:
<...
2023-08-16 13:00:07 +0000 UTC
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Yeahp, here's a new, hot-off-the-iPad set of photoreferenced life drawings sketched this very morning (July 31st) in Clip Studio Paint, using the Design Pencil brush:
The arm at left is actually flipped upside-down from the ref photo (of a liftbro doing a bench press), hence the slightly odd underlighting effect.
The middle figure isn't censored per se, as the original model had odd-looking, gloppy glitter of some sort posted over her, a...
2023-08-14 13:00:13 +0000 UTC
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So!
As mentioned in a previous Work Stages post on the opening story from fantasy test project The Chaste and the Chained, one of the last "hybrid workflow" pages from that update showed some promise:
Time elapsed on this smaller-sized comic page: 3:00 for the roughs and 5:00 for the final inks and pencils, for a total worktime of 8 hours
2023-08-11 13:01:00 +0000 UTC
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9 minutes to prep this post! LET'S GO!
Behold, a trio of 2001 commissions scanned from old photocopies and based on the same pair of OCs (Original Characters) three times. Golly! (Pretty sure I did a fourth, but cant find that one right now.) Not bad, considering!
Potentially photoreffed costumes, but I can't swear to that. Next up, a piece based on Atsuji Yamamoto's old manga Sinbad, which was oddly influential...
2023-08-09 13:00:05 +0000 UTC
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From my 2019 era of experimentation in the iPad art app Procreate, here's another sketch set derived from a mix of random photoreference, mostly of a cosplay-based sort. At this point I was still using Procreate's admittedly "mushy-looking" Medium Airbrush to get something onto the g-d tablet:
In an all-too-familiar experience, note that I was not having a good time trying to find workable brushes in Procreate... as oppo...
2023-08-07 13:00:04 +0000 UTC
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[Check out our previous installment here.]
So! For today's desperately pressed-into-service installment of Failed-Project Friday, we'll be continuing our look at a rather sweeping proposal I made to Marvel back in 2004 for a lengthy run writing Iron Man. The SF-skewing pitch featured three different ambitious story arcs building on each other, and wound up being a...
2023-08-04 13:00:06 +0000 UTC
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From last month's ultimately failed series of "hybrid workflow" experiments (said failure to be addressed in detail down the road), here be the Work Stages on page 4-5 from the opening story of fantasy test comic The Chaste and the Chained.
For page 4, I grabbed the initial, sketchy page rough, worked it up in Clip Studio Paint, then turned it into a blueline:
..then printed out t...
2023-08-02 13:53:30 +0000 UTC
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Behold, s'more art requests from the Big Spenders left over from this weekend's blowout Bonus Post that featured a quintet(!) of Clip Studio Paint sketch sets. Closing out the master list of outstanding art reqs, here are a fantasy-oriented pair of images:
Both were drawn via the CSP iOS app, where the Design Pencil brush allows a fine simulacrum of true pencilwork. (Alas, that is emphatically not the case when the same brush is used ...
2023-07-31 13:00:07 +0000 UTC
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